An Average Guy Built This in One Weekend. Here's How

I built a business in a weekend with AI. By 6 weeks in, I had done $180 grand.

So that first one, you said it brought you $200,000 to $300,000.

Yeah.

And I'm not trying to underplay or undersell what you built in a weekend, but you vibe coded something. And that's something that a lot of people watching this totally have also done. You didn't start an apparel manufacturing company over the weekend. You vibe coded something. And we're in this very brief, unique moment in time where the vast majority of people have never heard that phrase, and they have no idea that you're just using natural language to ask a software tool to make your own software tool.

Bingo. Anyone can do this. I'm an average guy. I don't know how to code. And I just got up, I was like, I'm going to try to build a business today and see if I can get a customer by tomorrow. And it was like kind of a dare. It was totally an accident. I was not that day anticipating where I would be today.

I genuinely don't believe that anyone is actually afraid of failure. You're stranded on an island all by yourself. You know, you've got to build a raft that can get you like 5 miles. Are you going to not build that raft because you're afraid you'll fail? No. Like, you have to build the raft, right?

Yeah.

But let's say you were— this was like Truman Show and you're being live streamed on that stranded island. You might not build that raft because you are afraid of the perception of failure from other people watching. Totally. No one's afraid of failure. We're just afraid of what people will think if we fail. Flip that switch in your brain. Just go do it. I had a guest on a couple months ago, John Cheney. You may remember him as the guy that made $2.5 million in a year vibe coding websites for business owners. Well, he happened to make $180 grand in his first 6 weeks by employing one little trick., and you're gonna hear exactly how this works. How do you sell yourself? How do you get anything you want? Well, today let's get very specific about that because my last episode with John didn't quite go deep enough on how he found customers. So this one will. Please enjoy.

Look, getting customers is where most people kind of struggle, right? They come up with this awesome idea and Chris, you're so good. My kids, I've, I put my kids onto your channel.

Like they're—

thank you. They love those ideas. They're trying to figure out like, how am I gonna make money for the summer? And they're all ages like 9 to 14. They're young, but There's some ideas in there that like, I could do this. Yeah. Right. But then they're like, but how do I get customers, dad? Right. How do I do this? And obviously, yeah, you can go door to door and you can go, you know, onto Main Street door to door and find businesses or just pick up the phone or jump on LinkedIn and all those things work. And you should do that. You should hustle for sure. But I like to find ways to make noise. And there's a lot of ways to make noise. And we can talk about a bunch of these things on this call from, you know, ranging from, you know, social media posting, which is a huge thing. Right. And we, we need to cover that cuz it's a huge way that I make money. And, or that I get customers and I get eyeballs on me. Right. But traditional news, like traditional news and, you know, whether that's like print, like a newspaper or, you know, digital print, or just like the traditional news. Like when I first launched this company, I reached out to just the news desk. You know, you could just get on a website on, you know, on, on Channel 2 News or Channel 5 or Fox, just like fill out forms, just fill out a form. Yeah. There's just like, they're always looking, these guys. Are all, they're, they're creative people and they're looking for cool angles, cool stories. Mm-hmm. So be a good storyteller, right? I mean, that's, that's something that everybody knows is a, is an awesome way to make money if you're a good storyteller. So be a good storyteller and reach out to these, these local news stations. So I reached out to KUTV and here in Utah and, and just said, hey, I built a business in a weekend with AI. Like, oh, that's a cool kind of hook, right? Like, I like that. This guy built a business in a weekend. That's a cool story. Let's do it. And so they came out. I mean, literally, I'm not kidding you, that day, later that afternoon, they said, hey, you want to put this on the news tonight? And I was like, yeah, come on out. So I cleaned my office up, right? And they literally had their camera sitting right here on me. You know, if you look up KUTV Channel News, Channel 2 News, John Cheney, you'll find the, you'll find the broadcast, the little 3-minute segment they did on me. And then over the next few days, I had people adding me on LinkedIn and reaching out and saying, hey, I saw you on the news and hey, I've got a company, I need some help with AI and Sweet. And, and I got, I, I know I got one deal that was a $20K deal a month, $20K a month. I got another one that was $10K a month. And then I got several trainings that were like a $10K or a $15K, like one time, hey, come in and train our company.

You know?

Yeah. It was probably about $200,000 to $300,000 somewhere in there in terms of like total value of deals that came to me from one little, you know, hey, cover my story. This is what I'm doing. Here's the angle. Here's why other people would like to hear that. And of course, you know, you don't wanna, this is an important thing when you're pitching media is they don't wanna just do a free commercial for you. That's, that's the critical thing. It's not like, hey, I sell, you know, I, I can come and, you know, power wash your, your sidewalks. They don't want, they don't wanna hear that. They don't wanna hear that. It needs to be interesting. There needs to be human interest, or you need to help people be inspired a little bit like you do, Chris, with here's someone who's doing something cool and he's gonna share with you a little bit about how you might be able to do that too.

What was your pitch to them? Do you still have a record of that anywhere that you could read to us? Like, I'm especially hoping it's, there's nothing super special about it. Like, that would be actually amazing.

'Cause it's like, it's not, no, there's nothing special about it. I literally, and look, I don't, I can't find it. I actually found the guy that I, I was, I was texting to, and this is actually a later text for a, a follow-up story pitch that I did. And by the way, that's, you know, we'll skip ahead to that and I'll come back to answer this. 6 months later, I was like, hey, I did $1 million in the last 6 months. He's like, Amazing follow-up. I'll be back at your place this, you know, can you do, can you do tonight? And I was like, yeah, he brought the camera crew back. He's like, hey, how's it going? Right.

Anyway, it's the same day again.

Same day. Yeah. A lot of time. And that's crazy because that means he's looking for stories, but for something. Yeah.

They're looking for something.

Totally.

This isn't like breaking news. Like if they publish that a week later, it makes no difference. So that tells me, like if we were to publish this tomorrow, that would be a signal to you that I have no backlog. Yeah. It's not necessarily that I'm desperate. It just means I have no backlog. And sometimes I don't right now. I do. Yeah. But So to me, that's like, wow, if, if this random local news station, which are a dime a dozen, has no backlog, it's pretty common that no one else does either. They're just sitting around for something like waiting for something to talk about.

Yeah. Yeah. And as long as there isn't, you know, a fire or a murder or something that, you know, everyone wants to talk about, then yeah, you're the story. And like you said, a lot of times they will, they'll, they'll film it and it doesn't matter if it's, if today's May 30th or May 31st, like It doesn't matter when they do it, they could do it, they can air it a week later. So anyway, that works. And yeah, honestly, the message was just, hey, you know, here's what I did. Here's the angle I have on the story. Here's why I think your listeners will like it. That's important. Why will your listeners get value from this?

So you told them that, like, what's in it for you? 100%. Get ahead of it. You don't want them to have to try to be creative and wonder what's in it for me.

You need to tell them. No, hand them a packaged deal. Yeah, do their job for them. They're gonna be like, I get it. I can, I can show up and I don't need any prep. I can put the camera on him, interview him for 5 minutes and I'm done. And that's all it takes, by the way. You know, a total news interview. I'm sure you've done them before as well. They're fast. Like they're in, they're out in 25, 30 minutes from your house. Like it's, yeah, you know, get the most of the time is like getting the microphone situated real quick.

Please subscribe to my channel. I know it's kind of lame to ask, but it means a lot.

Thanks.

So that first one, you said it brought you $200,000 to $300,000 in value, in revenue. And most of that is profit because I know your business. We've spoken before.

Yeah.

I'm not trying to underplay or undersell what you built in a weekend, but you vibe coded something. And that's something that a lot of people watching this totally have also done, right? You didn't start a restaurant. You know what I'm saying? Like you didn't start an apparel manufacturing company over the weekend. You vibe coded something and we're in this very brief, unique moment in time where the vast majority of people have never heard that phrase and they have no idea that you're just using natural language to ask a software tool to make your own software tool, right? So the guy that read your cold email probably thought there was more to it than that. But even, even after he heard your story, like, it still performed well. And like, they— I'm sure they didn't regret doing it because he's representative of most people. They don't know that you can just vibe code stuff over a weekend.

Yeah.

Over an afternoon.

Exactly. And that was the idea, right? And that was, that was the value that I was pitching. I was like, look, people don't understand how powerful AI is today. Anyone can do this. I'm an average guy. And that's what I said on the, on the, on the news thing. I was like, I don't know how to code, but I used AI and these neat tools that let me do this to go and bring an idea to life. And, and now I have customers, right? And the customer, getting the customer part is, you know, you gotta get out there and make it happen. And, you know, my first customers didn't come from a news agency. This was about, you, you can't really like launch it and then be on the news the next day. You kinda gotta come up with something, get your first customers, like figure that out. And then, you know, the first story, I guess, on the news was probably out 6 weeks in. And I had, by 6 weeks in, I had done $180 grand. And so I had a story, right? It was like, wow, this guy's taken off super fast. He's, you know, completely replaced his income in 6 weeks cuz of AI. And, and that was, that was the story. That was the angle.

So how much value did that second interview bring you, or was it kind of hard to attribute because you were further along in your journey?

Yeah. You know, I actually combined it into a secondary story right at the same time. I wanted it to be a big, like, hey, here's a lot of news, a lot of juicy stuff. I had also just that week before signed a deal with BYU to become the official AI partner of BYU Athletics, and I was going to be helping BYU athletes learn AI so that as they prepare to enter the workforce, they have this tech, because they're not, they weren't learning it as much at school as they, they wanted to be. And, and they felt that there was a big gap there and teaching people how to build businesses with AI, they, they thought that was gonna be super valuable. So I signed a deal with BYU. So I had that to talk about. I had, hey, so how's the business? You know, hey, you know, we talked to you 6 months ago. Yeah, we've gone from $180,000 up to a million. And, you know, so there were some update elements to it.. But I just brought this whole package of the story. It was like, hey, there's a lot going on. A lot of local people, of course, in Utah care about BYU Athletics and, and you know, they're interested to know if there's some cool deal there that's helping athletes. And that's just kind of a human interest story. Yeah. The second pitch was pretty easy. It was just like, and, and, and this was, this is a key thing. Now I've got a buddy over at KUTV. I've got his cell phone. I can text him and be like, hey, I've got a story. Is this interesting to you? And by the way, I've texted him. A couple times and been like, hey, is this interesting to you? It's like, no, not— that probably isn't. But if you had something like if you had a customer, someone that was doing this or whatever, so there will be more and you can, you can start to build out your own little PR network.

Yeah. I mean, yourself, no different than my podcast. If I have a good guest on, I want them to come back on.

Totally. Yeah. Here I am.

It's a symbiotic relationship.

Yeah, 100%. So anyway, finding those opportunities to, to land somebody that lends you that credibility is an amazing way to get free marketing. It doesn't cost you anything. It is hard. You got to work and you got to push. But, but if once you get that deal, you want to leverage it. Here's another thing I did when I landed BYU. I did the KUTV kind of follow-up thing. And then I also, I got Replit. I texted Amjad Massad. I was like, hey man, I'm doing this deal with, with BYU. I plan on teaching all of these students Replit. Would you mind donating 6 free months per athlete of Replit. And he's like, I've never really done anything like that, but yeah, let's do it. And so he jumped in and I was like, sweet, can we do a press release about this? So it's me and BYU, a top-tier university, and Replit, a multi-billion-dollar startup. Mm-hmm. Right? I'm this little, I'm the little guy, but I'm bringing 'em us all together. And then I'm putting out the press release saying, hey, we're working with BYU doing this. And Replit has jumped in. Amjad does this. Hey, Replit, can you give me a quote from the CEO, from Amjad, that's approved? And BYU, can you give me a quote that's approved? And you have to go through a process. You can't just talk about these things in a press release unless you have the permission. And it might take you a few weeks to put it all together, but a press release does not cost very much. And then it lands you in, you know, Yahoo News and MSNBC and other people pick it up and TechCrunch and all these different things. Now you have tons of backlinks to your website and you have big credible names talking about you in public. It's cool. Press release is another big marketing tactic.

What service do you use for press releases?

It's PR Newswire, and it's a little bit more expensive. It costs about $1,000 for one, but there's other ones out there. Yeah.

And you think that's worth it? I mean, it depends on the niche, right?

But for this, it depends. It depends on the niche. Yeah. Because it was a big deal and I wanted good, like, A-tier quality people picking it up. I was like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna invest in this a little bit. So, yeah, it costs a little bit, but but it's worth it.

Yeah, I don't know if I've ever done a press release. I'm just— I'm too short-sighted. I'm too cheap. Just spend that $1,000. But I'm sure in a lot of cases it would— I'd get my money back and then some, for sure.

If there's some sort of strategic partnership, you're, you know, let's, you know, GenAIPI and Corner Office, you know, team up to do what, you know, and just put a press release out there. And now someone might pick that up and be like, hey, I need some AI services, you know, Chris Koerner is super legit and Jenny Appiah looks cool. Like, I'm going to call these guys up. There's something here. That kind of thing absolutely works.

Yeah, absolutely. Early on you said you've got to be a good storyteller. Yeah. How do you do that? How do people become good storytellers?

It's back to the same thing I was talking about earlier. What's in it for them, right? You got to relate to them. A lot of people tell a story about themselves and they talk about how awesome they are.

And we do that out of insecurity. Like, we do think that we're helping ourselves, like we're giving our, you know, more credibility to others about ourselves when we're shooting ourselves in the foot.

100%. When it's actually a way better strategy to just kind of debase yourself a little bit. You might be really smart at that thing, but it's way better to connect with somebody and say, look, I'm no different than you. You're probably smarter than me. But look, this is the pattern. Here's the, here's the framework that I did. And if you follow this framework, you're gonna do so much more with it than I did. Mm-hmm. Right? And that's, that's really how you tell a good story is you help them feel like they're there, they're part of it. I'm always selling the vision of what will it be like when you're, like, after you've adopted AI, right? Yeah. Like, imagine your life is like this. You wake up in the morning and da, da, da, da, da, and AI has already taken care of all this stuff, right? Telling that story of the future desired state is way better than saying, here's our benefits and features, you know?

Well, in my opinion, like, everything in business comes down to removing or adding friction where necessary. And so to me, what I'm hearing is you're removing the friction of them not being able to see themselves in that thing, in the car that you're trying to sell them, with the AI tool that you're trying to build them. You're painting the picture for them. It's kind of like a test drive of a car, right?

You don't really—

100%— car sales, but you don't take them on test drives so they can like see how it rides and see how the suspension is. Like, they don't even know what that means or feels like.

For sure.

They, you want them to like picture themselves, in this case, literally in the car, because the chance that they'll buy it is significantly higher if they do so. It's not about the seat and the, because it's, it's all confirmation bias. They sit in the car and they already kind of like it, but they're like, oh yeah, I kind of like how it does this. Of course you do. Like, you want to buy it. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. They're closing themselves on the deal at this point. So it's, I don't know if I've told this story before, but my junior year of high school, I joined the yearbook class just because I had a free elective and I didn't care about it. It didn't mean anything to me. I was like, whatever. But we had like a nationally ranked yearbook. It was, it was serious. We, our yearbook advisor was legit. She was like, she went to Columbia and she took it very seriously. I didn't know any of that. So we joined this class and our first assignment, day one, she has us, you know, reach into a bowl. With some sheets of paper and she says, you know, pull out the sheet of paper and wherever it says in the school, go. So like, you know, cafeteria, hallway, north hallway, you know, and mine was the orchestra room. She says, I want you to bring your notepad, go to that room, it's totally randomized, and just write down what you observe. And I was like, okay, whatever. And I'm not a writer, never have been, whatever. So I go into the orchestra room, I sit in the back for an hour and I was like the class clown. I was not a good student. And so I write the most sarcastic thing ever, like just trying to be like eloquent in a very sarcastic way. I'm like, the reverberations of the viola bounce against the darkest chambers of my heart. Like the cellos are bouncing between the rafters and it makes me contemplate my own mortal existence. Like I was totally just trolling. Like, I was just like, how can I ham this up? And so I turn it in. It was, it was just a joke. I didn't take it seriously. Yeah. And the next day she comes, she's like, hey, I read your assignments. You know, honestly, not pleased with most of them. You guys can do better than this. But one of them, one of them touched me deeply. And she put her hand on her heart. I was like, geez, we're like, we're all looking around. We're like, oh, it's probably Sarah.

Oh, it was Jenna. So good.

And she's like, I have to read this to you. This was one of the most touching things I've ever read. And if I were to actually go back and read it, maybe it was halfway decent. I don't know. I would pay a lot of money to have that sheet of paper. For sure. And she proceeds to read my story and I'm just like, beat red, sweat. Like this was not at all what I had planned because I didn't expect her to read it. A, B, I didn't expect her to read it in that context of legitimately loving it.

Yeah.

And so she reads it and everyone's like, wow, that's really good. And I'm like, oh my gosh. She's like, guess who it was? And like, oh, you know, this girl or that girl? She's like, Chris Koerner. And they were like, what?

Chris?

Like, they were, they're like, huh? And I'm like, I don't know, guys. Like, there was no ChatGPT. I actually wrote this. And, uh, that led this down this path where she picked me to be the assistant executive editor. And then the editor was a senior. And so when she graduated, I was a junior. I became the executive editor. And it reminds me of that. You ever see The Other Guys with Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell? Yeah, for sure. Like Mark Wahlberg, he confronts his girlfriend in the dance studio and he like starts doing perfect ballet. She's like, what? He's like, yeah, I learned to dance so I can make fun of everyone. She's like, you learned to dance sarcastically? So I learned to write sarcastically.

That's how you did that. Yeah. Oh, you know what's funny too is I, that's how I started GenAIPI is it was literally just like, I wonder what I should do this day. I don't know if you remember my story a few weeks ago or whenever it was that we talked a couple months ago. But like, I just woke up Thursday morning and I post on social media, and this is a good segue into the next section here about, let's talk about social media because I think it's important. And I just got up and I was like, I'm gonna try to build a business today and see if I can get a customer by tomorrow. And then, and it was like kind of a dare. It was totally an accident. I was not that day anticipating where I would be today with 27 employees. Like a year and a half later, huge AI, you know, helping companies do this.

You put like a false constraint on yourself and that made all the difference.

I did. I did. Yeah. The false constraints are, are cool. I think they're, I think they're awesome. So building in public, that's another great thing, right? This is not exactly social media, but it kind of is. Building in public is awesome. When you're building something, tell everyone about it. Yeah. Like so many people are like, ah, someone's gonna steal my idea. But you know what, Chris, you make a living from giving everybody every idea, right? Like all these cool ideas and no one's saying like, oh, I tried that, but it was too saturated in my market. Like, I bet you'd never hear that, right? The reality is, right, execution is where, is where, you know, the money lives. The ideas are a dime a dozen. So go out there, tell people exactly what you're doing. If you're doing a stump grinding business, tell everyone and they're going to be like, oh, I've got this tree in my backyard. Like, just tell everyone. Okay. So how do you do it? So there's a, there's a book that I treat, I love, I read it all the time and look at little things lately and And I just, I kind of followed the principles of it as I, as I founded this company. And I talk about a bunch and you've probably read it. It's by Gary Vee, Day Trading Attention.

And I don't think I've read that one.

Oh, it's so good. It's $20. Guys, everybody listening, go get this. Gary Vee will pay me no money. I do not know Gary Vee. I follow him. I'm a fan of his, but go buy his book.

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Day trading a 10— have you ever day traded? Have you ever day traded, Chris? Yeah. Like the stock market.

Haven't we all lost money?

Okay. We all, we all have lost money doing this.

1% a day. We do 1% a day. If it compounds, stop, just stop.

Oh, I've been there. I remember when I made my first million, I, I threw it all into like a Charles Schwab account and I was high enough and I enabled day trading. I was like, this is fun. And I'm not kidding you. I traded like $100 million in and out, right? $100 million over like 3 months, right? In total, in total trades, right? It's just the million dollars. By the end of 3 months, I had had so much stress. I'd been up and down. I finished at $990,000. Wasted 3 months, lost 10 grand. Anyway, but it's kind of all-consuming, right? And so I love the idea, the mental thing of day trading attention. You just got to be there. Gary Vee posts to social media 60 times a day. Do you know how many times you post, by the way, Chris? I'm curious. Do you know that?

If I were to add up all my platforms—

Yeah, all platforms. It doesn't matter if it's the same post.

Yeah. At least 25 to 30. 40, probably.

Yeah, big time. And you're probably, and I'm probably like 12 to 15 depending on the day and sometimes a little bit more. But, but yeah, so you're ahead of me. Gary's ahead of us. But there's no question that just being in the, the best way for people not to buy from you is for people to not know about you. The end. If you want an at-bat, you've gotta step up to the plate, right? That's all it is. You just gotta get out there and post. And the thing that Gary Vee just like pounds into your head in this book. He's like, guys, this literally costs nothing. It's free. It is free to post to YouTube. It is free to post to Instagram, to Facebook, to LinkedIn, to Snap, to Reddit, to Sub— to Substack, you know, whatever. Now, it does take some effort for sure, and you can create some systems. Heck, I can show you how to use AI to create some systems to do that. Right? There's absolutely ways you can do that to, to do that. And all of these platforms have great scheduling features. Right? So you don't have to just get on every day. You can schedule it out and, you know, make plans. And, and you could do a whole other episode on, you know, how to cut up long-form content like this and do whatever. Lots, lots of ways of the strategies. But I got myself into the habit of posting every single day a few years ago. I gave myself a challenge, and I'm going to issue it to everyone right now because I think it's just cool and good for you. And you can do it for a year, but do it for a month. Let's do it for 30 days. Every single day, post something you're grateful for. That's it. I did it for a year. I did, I did, it was a leap year. I did it 366 days.

Remember our church had a challenge to do that for a week. Do you remember that? I do remember that. 10 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. It was like an official church thing. And I remember one day was my wife, one day, and I would write these stories. So yeah. Anyway, keep going.

Do you know how hard it is to do it for a year? Yeah. Especially on days that you don't feel very grateful, you know, like today sucked. I got sued today, or I broke my leg, or, you know, one of my, you know, my backyard caught on fire, or whatever it is. Like, there's so many things that happen to us in life. And so, but first of all, besides the fact that it's a good social media practice, it's good for here, right? It's good to say, all right, can I look at my life every day, commit to something that's okay? I'm I'm grateful for something. I don't care if you write this grateful for the same thing every day, right? If you can't come up with something new. But I, I made it my goal kind of to make it something new for 366 days. I used my wife a couple times as something, probably used piano as a couple things and adventure and kayaking and mountain biking. You know, there's, but there's so many things you just pick something out and be like, man, I'm just grateful for this. And you know, and, and you know, your followers will like it. Your, your follower, you will grow your follower account for sure. 'Cause it's good positive content in their feed and, You'll, you'll have people, you know, comment what they're grateful for, things like that. So I'm issuing that to everybody. One month, try it for a month. And it's not just like, don't miss a day, be disciplined about it. It's the discipline of posting every day that really gets you to take off on social media, whatever platform, all platforms. No call to action on the, on the gratitude one.

Yeah. Just a public gratitude journal for 30 days.

Yeah. Just do it. I mean, you could certainly add at the end of it, hey, tell me what you're grateful for today. You could certainly do that. Try to get a few people engaged. There's no question that a call to action is a good, you know, good thing to do. Another thing that Gary V talks about in another book of his is this jab, jab, hook, right? Hook strategy, which is all about, I'm gonna give value, I'm gonna give value, free value, free value, free value. I'm gonna post, like for example, I post about AI every day and I'll say, hey, I checked out this new platform. It's really cool. Here's what I like about it. Here's what I don't like about it. Have you guys tried it yet? I'm not asking for, I'm not selling anything there. I'm giving some value. I'm kind of a reporter. I'm just saying what's going on.

What you just said is what most people watching or listening to this are already doing. We're all playing with tools. They're just not posting about it. Totally. So you're saying like you've already done the hard part, but it's also very fun. Now just like put yourself out there a little bit and post about it.

Yeah.

The reality is, see what happens.

I post, I'm sure you do this too. You'll post on Facebook or something. And it'll be some like big deal of something that you're like really proud of. And then you'll, you'll meet somebody that you know and you're like, yeah, I posted about it the other day. Did you see that? And you know, you got like 10,000 likes on it and they're like, no, I didn't see it. You're like, what the heck, man?

Like, there's so much we're all seeing. Yeah.

Everyone's scrolling. If they don't like what you have to say, so many people are worried about, am I gonna say exactly what I think? Who cares?

Well, that's my next question is, yeah, I think most people watching this are, are able to do that every day, but they're, they're not as able to get over that, that insecurity that I have. You, like, we all have it. How do you get over it to care about— to not care about what other people think?

Just start doing it. You got to just push through it, right? Like, it's hard to run—

you just have to—

5 miles. It's hard to run 10 miles. And but when you're at mile 6, you just have to say, all right, I got to just push through this. It's a little uncomfortable, but just do it and you'll accomplish your goal, right? If you, if you want to be out there and you want to really have people see your message, figure out what that message is and then just say it. And if you don't feel like you have something to say on that message every day, don't beat yourself up about it. Don't, don't try to be fake. Don't go to AI and do some slop, right? One thing I do, I do not use AI on my post. I don't do it. It is all out of my head. I'm just like, hey, I just, that's just what I chose. I'm not saying that people use AI is bad. It's, I personally am like, I want people to hear what I'm thinking. And sometimes it's like, I'm going to post about family or I'm going to post about I'm gonna post about, you know, kayaking, or I'm gonna post about piano, or I'm gonna post about AI, whatever it is. Or I'm gonna post about a book I read, or, you know, hey, I was in LA this week doing something and here's a cool thing that I did or saw or discussion I had. There's so many things to just talk about and there's people out there. Another thing that's talked about in this book that a lot of people don't realize is, and this is why this situation I just said, hey, didn't you see that thing I posted about the other day? And it's like a close friend and you're like, no, I didn't see it. I ask my wife all the time, did you see my post? No, I didn't. Well, why? Because she's looking at gardening videos. And here's why. These social platforms are switching from a social graph to an interest graph. They care more about— they wanna present content that, that people care about. And so if I'm talking about AI, yeah, people that like AI are going to follow me because they're gonna find my content.

Yeah.

Right?

If I post about— that's the good part of it is people that don't know you personally will find—

it brings new people in. If I talk about AI, Good chances are that my neighbor is not going to see that post, even though I know I'm friends with them right here, right? I know, I know that they're, you know, we're friends on Facebook. Now, if I post about my farm or my family, my neighbors will see it. Like Facebook knows what to deliver to who. I think that's super important is knowing that if you just get out there, if you just post, the right people hopefully are going to see it eventually, especially if you do it consistently. A platform starts to know this guy talks about this. And they'll start to push you to those audiences.

Yeah. Any other hacks, tips, tricks to generating eyeballs, getting attention that come to mind?

Yeah. Here's one thing on social media that I really want to talk about. It's a simple concept, but how often do you— Chris, I'm curious for you— how often do you post about your personal life on LinkedIn?

Once a week, maybe. Yeah, that's not as often as I should, by the way.

No, but it's, but it's more than most people do. A lot of people are like, never. And then, and then before we, you know, we talked about this, what about on like, you know, something more Facebook or Instagram? How often do you talk about, hey, you know, I'm, this is what I do for work. I think, I think you do a lot. Yeah. And so a lot of people try to live these two lives, right? Mm-hmm. And, and I have personally found that, like, I've had people, I, I'll post a kayaking video of me going off, you know, one of those waterfalls I was just talking about. I got videos of it all, GoPros and all that stuff. And I'll post it and I'll say, man, this was such a fun weekend to get away, man. I, This is where I'd rather be instead of doing AI or whatever, you know? And so then people will reach out and they'll say, hey, I saw your kayaking video. And by the way, I own a business and, you know, we need some help with AI. Can you help us out? Right? People want to do business with people and people are more than just one thing. Right? And so don't be afraid. I've also had on, you know, the converse on Facebook, I'll post about AI and I'll have somebody from like, I haven't seen since high school say, hey, I saw you post about AI. I've got, you know, I own a business now. Right? You know, all of my, you know, I, I'm 40 in 9 days here. And so all tons of my friends own businesses. Right. And, you know, they've got 50 employees and whatever they're doing great. Or, you know, they're just getting started. Like, man, I need to learn about AI. It seems like you're the guy on this. I saw your post. Looks awesome. And I looked at your website and can you help me out? Right. Don't be afraid to be a full person on every platform. Post about your life. Post about your family. Post about your beliefs. You know, you do, do tread lightly and do it in the right way. Don't do it offensively. Do it in a way like, hey, right, this is what I think and this is how it helps me. Now, I will say, if I'm talking about kayaking or if I'm talking about God or family or something like that on LinkedIn, I do try to relate it. Like, why does believing in this help me in my professional life? I do, I do tilt it a little bit towards that platform. Yeah, this posting and then tying it all in and being a complete person is an incredible, incredible way to get people coming to you looking for what you have to offer.

Well, another thing it does is, you know, there's this thing called social proof, which is like, oh, this guy doesn't have a lot of followers, so I'm not going to watch his video or click his thing or DM him. And there's some truth to that, right? Yes. But you can largely offset that by posting personal stuff about your life. I had a— I had lunch with my friend and a guy on my team, Kevin, and he posts content. Doesn't have a ton of followers, but he posts like day in the life videos of a dad with a couple of kids. Yeah, former cop. This is me working out at 5 in the morning. They don't get a ton of views, but they're real and they're raw and they're him. And he noticed anecdotally that when he DMs strangers with an ask, right, that ask might be, hey, come on Chris Koerner's podcast. It might be a sales pitch. His response rate is extremely high, even though he doesn't have tons and tons of followers, because they'll inevitably go to his page. They'll watch 5 seconds of a video, and in that 5 seconds they're going to see dad, former cop, seemingly good guy. Therefore, they respond, they reference that stuff. So you can overcome not having a lot of followers by just being a human and connecting with people on a one-to-one level. Absolutely.

There's so many people— no, I, I love that. And Kevin's, Kevin's awesome. I really like him. You've got a good team member there. But I— there's so many people. I want to go back to You know, and maybe we can kind of start to, to move towards the close here on this. Don't be afraid to put yourself out there. Like, look, what's gonna hap— I haven't gotten 100% of the TV stations that I've reached out to. Some of 'em just, I just don't hear back, right? Or they're like, oh yeah, this probably isn't for us. Okay, cool. Doesn't mean it's not, it's not gonna stop me from submitting again. And yeah, look, maybe they do have a lot of news that week and that's cool. They're good, right? Right. But you might catch somebody, you send out 6 or 7 news stations, you know, every so-and-so and, and, and make a story each time and don't bother with them. Don't spam them a bunch, right? But come up with real reasons, real news, real things to talk about, ways that you can help the world, and get it, get it out there. Put it on the news, you know. Same thing, by the way, for digital print. Like, there's, you know, the Provo Daily Herald, right? They've got a bunch of writers over there looking for stuff to write on every day. Same thing. Hey, I've got an idea, right? And, and I've done this with my last company, Seek. If you just type Seek John Cheney and just Google it, you'll find 50 to 60 articles and news things and clips. I've been doing this for a decade. This is not new. I've been doing this for a long time. And again, we wouldn't pay for marketing over there. And I worked with many of the biggest companies in the world, Nestlé, Lego. I remember we got Nestlé from, I did an article in, in a publication called Raconteur that's out of London and they actually print it and then it's digital and whatever. And Nestlé's like, yeah, I read about what you were doing with augmented reality and all this stuff. And I wanna work with you. And I was like, sweet. We landed a huge client in Nestlé that ended up, we probably made a million dollars from that client over the years. Right? It was probably a 3-year, $300,000 a year. So, you know, roughly tight contract and it's free. It's free, guys. Right? But, but you have to not be afraid to put yourself out there. News, written, press release, social every day consistently. Find that thing and your audience will find you because of these interest graphs, but you gotta be willing. To put yourself out there. And if you do, you're gonna find people. People come to me all the time, their companies, because they need help with AI, because I just talk about AI a lot. And I get awesome customers. I work with, I work with public companies to solopreneurs, everything in between, in helping them integrate AI into their business because I just talk about it a lot. And I've become a trusted source because I've done it consistently over time. I've done now thousands and thousands of posts about AI, and there, there's just so much content.

Guys, I wanna tell you about something I've been building behind the scenes. You've been watching my videos about AI tools and asking the same question. Okay, cool. How do I turn this into a business? Not just playing around with AI, but actually getting clients and getting paid. That's my community. It's called Playmakers, playmakersai.com. It's an AI agency program where we show you how to start an AI consulting business where you can charge local businesses $500 to $5,000 a month to set up and manage AI tools for them. It's not a course you watch and forget about. We do 3 to 7 live training calls every week taught by me and 23 other expert AI agency owners. You get plug-and-play templates, Claude code tutorials, AI voice agent frameworks, automation templates, and a 30-day roadmap so you don't fall off track. This is stuff you can just copy, paste, and deploy for clients on day one. And of course, how to find clients as well. We also have a 5-day first client challenge where we can walk you through landing your first paying client in 5 days. You also get my frameworks for cold email, Facebook ads, SMS, cold calls, and then I hand you my Leads Galore spreadsheets with actual leads in your niche in your area. We've already got over 200 people in there building real agencies. If you miss a live call, it's all recorded. So if you've ever thought about starting an AI consulting business or AI implementation business, go check out playmakersai.com.

Also, when you post something online, you know this, Chris, too, when you post a YouTube video, it's there forever. It's evergreen, right? It keeps feeding you for years.

And you don't need a lot of views. You just need the right views. Totally. I'll wrap with this. I'm not gonna tell this whole story 'cause I've told it a zillion times and anytime I go on a podcast, it's It's like one of the first things they ask me is my, my Buc-ee's story. But I went to Buc-ee's, I bought one of everything, but I— none of that happens if I don't cold email like 5 reporters. I emailed more than that, but only a couple responded. And this one article right here by Dan Solomon, the Texas Monthly, they've got like 5 million monthly subscribers. It's the biggest news outlet in the state of Texas. Published on November 12th, 2020. This one article was responsible for $180,000 in sales. Our first one. I love it. And this year, this year, we're still in business 6 years later. We'll do over $1 million in net profit. And none of that happens without this article because this article led to the Southern Living, which led to the Eater article, which led to the CNET article, which led to everything. Like, and it was all one email to a guy. And I just went to his byline, his email's right there. I didn't use expensive or fancy software. I just opened my Gmail account and was like, I bought one of everything at Bucky's and I'm gonna sell 'em on a website. Do you wanna write about that? And we were on the phone within an hour. 'Cause that's it. Asymmetric bet of a lifetime, right? One email, millions of dollars, 6 years later.

So I have to share, I have to share something that has always inspired me and maybe I learned it from him indirectly 'cause he told me it a long time ago. But you know, have you ever met Garrett Gee? Like the Bucket List Family Guy? The Bucket List Family Guy? He travels the world with his, you know, with his family and You know, he has millions of dollars because he sold a company to Snapchat. The way that he did it, he, he built this app that was a QR code scanning app. And this is, this is back in, like, I think I wanna say 2012 or so before, you know, it was, you know, QR code scanners were part of your just everyday camera on your phone. You had to download an app and, and he was learning how to code and he said, hey, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna just make QR code scanning a little bit better. So It's gonna load faster. It's gonna scan faster. It— the graphics are gonna be a little bit better. It's just gonna be a better experience overall. And I think if I get the best QR code scanning app, then I'll get, I'll get a ton of users. And he built it and it was awesome. And he's getting some users. He started to get hundreds, a couple thousand, whatever. And so he's like, okay, people like it. It's getting good reviews. And so he identified somebody in TechCrunch. He's like, people that are reading TechCrunch are my buyer. They're the, they're the ones that are gonna download this and use it. And so he identified the writer. Wrote them, and she said, ah, it's a QR code scanning app, this is kind of boring, like, I don't think I want to do it. He's like, no, you got to do it. She's like, sorry, I can't. And he's like, I'm not taking no for an answer. He gets on a plane, flies to TechCrunch's headquarters, finds her office, and knocks on her door and says, hey, it's Garrett, I'm taking you to lunch, I am taking you to lunch, and by the time we're done with lunch, you're going to want to write about this app, and here's why. And she's like, yeah, well You're crazy, but yeah, let's go to lunch. Let's do this. And so they just go down and find some cafe and sit and whatever. But then she's like, I just love the story. And the fact that you showed up here gives me an angle and I'm gonna write about it.

Yeah. The showing up is the angle that becomes, it might have been, it does on an island, a boring, like an objectively boring app and story, but he made it a good story by flying there. Sorry.

Keep going. He got, he got 50 million users on that app and sold to Snapchat for $54 million. Because of his users. And those— that, that QR code scanning technology that he built was faster. That was the basis for Snapcodes, right? He built the technology that ended up being inside of Snapcodes. And he, you know, the real value was, you know, anyone could build the QR code thing, and so they could have redone it. But they're just like, hey, let's just buy this, and it has 50 million users, and we'll pull them all into Snap, right? That was the value, was those users. But, but that's just another example. Just like your Bucky story reminded me of that. And, and again, I've I've done it to, you know, not to the degree of, of, of your Bucky story or of Garrett's thing, you know, but, but it's awesome. It's so fun.

That's how I partnered with John McAfee. I just sent him a cold email and I was at his house and we started a business together.

I love it. You just gotta go, John. Just gotta, you, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. I wrote Mark Cuban when I founded Seek.

Yeah.

I wrote Mark Cuban, just found his email online. I was like, hey, what do you think about this? Are you interested in investing? I was raising some money. And he's like, hey man, not interested in investing, but, but thanks for reaching out. Here's a couple of things I do maybe to make your pitch stronger. And I was like, awesome. Never heard from him again.

Right.

I just shot my shot and, you know, I didn't get anything out of it, but those types of experiences, you're like, look, I didn't die when he said no, I'm going to keep shooting my shot.

Dude, let me, before I end, I got to show you one thing. Yeah. All right. I'm embarrassed to show this, but whatever. Let's just YOLO it.

So that's what we're talking about right now.

It doesn't matter. No shame putting yourself out there. I moved to Dallas in the spring of 2014, 12 years ago from Alabama. Yeah. And I, I had heard that Mark Cuban responds to emails, so I Googled his email right here. I said, you coined wantrepreneur, I coined nonentrepreneur. I don't know why that was the subject. Hey, Mr. Cuban, I just wrote an article on Medium. I thought you'd like I don't even remember what that is. See if it works.

Oh, there it is. Got it.

Nice. Why non-entrepreneurs disdain entrepreneurs. The empowerment of Googling stuff. I don't even remember this. I need to read that. Anyway, I've grown my B2B company LCD Cycle from $30K to $600K a month in my first 17 months. We're moving out to Dallas for a more centralized distribution. You and Musk are my entrepreneurial role models. Thanks for the example. I'd love to work with you someday. And he said, he responded, congrats. Within 17 minutes, 8 plus 15 minutes and said, congrats. And then I said, remember my name. You'll be hearing about me soon enough. He never responded.

Yeah. That's so funny.

Whatever. Like, shoot your shot.

Who cares? Yeah. You, you just never know what opening a dialogue somewhere could do. Yeah. It's, it's so fun. That's to me, Chris. That is the joy of entrepreneurship. It's like, yeah, you just try a bunch of things and you fail asymmetric bets until you figure it out and then you're succeeding overnight, right? It's not that. It's you have to just know that the failures are not actually failures. You're just learning what doesn't work. Yeah. And eventually it all lines up and, and you figure it out, but you got to keep doing it. How many people fail at social media because they're like, yeah, I was posting for 2 months and nobody followed me, you know, you're like, okay, Tell me you did that for 2 years straight and then you can start complaining because that's what it takes. You gotta commit if you wanna build like tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, like you gotta be out there every day for years. Yeah. Look at, look at MrBeast's numbers. We don't need to talk about those now, but go look 'em up. How long it took him to hit his stride.

When you talk about failures, like I genuinely don't believe that anyone is actually afraid of failure. Here's my analogy. You're on a stranded island. You're stranded on an island all by yourself. You know, you've got to build a raft that can get you like 5 miles. Are you going to not build that raft because you're afraid you'll fail? No. Like, you have to build the raft, right? But in a—

but put some people there.

I'm— that's what I'm getting at. Let's say this was like Truman Show and you're being livestreamed on that stranded island.

Yeah.

You might not build that raft because you are afraid of the perception of failure from other people watching. No one's afraid of failure. We're just afraid of what people will think If we fail. So once you flip that switch in your brain and it doesn't matter, just go do it.

All right. So I'm going to amend my challenge then.

Okay.

In that 30 days of gratitude posting, at least one of those days must be a failure, like a real failure. And you got to talk about why you're grateful for that failure, right? Something that like might even be embarrassing. Put yourself out there a little bit and just be like, man, I tried this thing and I failed. But I'm grateful for it and here's what I learned from it. And then do your post, right? Turn into something good. But, but anyway, yeah, don't be afraid of failing.

Amen. This is amazing. Thank you. Where can we find you?

Yeah, you know, just look me up, John Cheney on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, X, I think all of those. I'm, and even TikTok, which I don't post as much, but I'm on there. At Cheney Piano and I post all kinds of stuff. If you follow me, you're going to find AI stuff and you're going to find piano stuff and Kayaking and adventure and my, my ducks, my two ducks that are, you know, super fun to play with. And anyway, probably my kids too. But anyway, would love to, would love to help you guys out. And, uh, if you're posting a bunch, connect with me, tell me you're starting and I'll follow you. You'll get at least one. Okay.

Thank you, John.

Okay. Appreciate it, Chris.

Listen, I need more people like this to interview on my podcast. So if you know of someone with a side hustle or a business that's unique and cool and super profitable, email molly@cofounders.com. That's one word, co-founders.com. Molly@cofounders.com. Founders.com, tell her your story, and we'll give you $100 if we end up interviewing them. If you like this content, please share with a friend, hit a like or a comment below, and we'll see you next time on the Koerner Office.